Joan Crawford In Coudersport

I grew up hearing about the time Joan Crawford came through Coudersport and ate at Mackey's Restaurant.

This from 1941 ... 

That article was written by Enterprise advertising salesman and later editor  Walter Taylor. My grandfather, his boss, penned the following in his newspaper column:

Joan Crawford, the glamour girl of the movies, dined in town Tuesday evening, and she didn't even let me know she was here. Well, by golly, she is the loser.

We might have shown her a copy of this paper and this particular column, and then, if she had said something complimentary, we might have made her a present of a three-month subscirption, value 50 cents.

But no, she would take up with "Bubbles," our advertising man, and dine with him!

Just for that we're giving her little space in this column, and no free subscription, not even one copy.

Bet she'll be all busted up.

Wondering what the actress was up to in 1941, I discovered this: First,  information about "A Woman's Face" from MGM, told in flashback from the vantage point of a murder trial. The story concerns a female criminal whose face is disfigured by a hideous scar. The plastic surgery removal of this disfigurement has profound repercussions, both positive and tragically negative. The film's subplots converge when the surgeon, Joan's lover, is murdered.

And in her tumultuous personal life, Ms. Crawford had adopted an infant, Marcus Gary Kulberg in June of 1941, renaming him Christopher Crawford. But in November, Joan and baby broker Alice Hough, return baby Kulberg to his mother. 

So perhaps Joan Crawford was grabbing a little solitude in the Pennsylvania Wilds - though we don't know where she stayed and who accompanied her.

Mackey's Restaurant capitalized on her visit and advertised:

I remember Mackey's on East Second Street across from the courthouse but it was rare for my family to eat meals in a restaurant. An advertisement in The Potter Leader-Enterprise in December 1967 made the announcement of its closing.